Shortly after a rat infested supply ship ran around in Lord Howe Island off the east coast of Australia in 1918, the newly introduced mammals wiped out the island's phasmids—stick insects the size of a human hand.

Near the turn of the millennium, James Collins and Stanislas Leibler independently undertook rather similar projects: design what would become synthetic biology’s seminal genetic circuits. And they came up with strikingly similar action plans.

After rummaging through thousands of amber inclusions housed at the University of Alberta and the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Canada, researchers discovered 11 amber encased-feather fossils that provide the most detailed picture yet of early feather evolution.

Using synchrotron rapid scanning X-ray fluorescence to map the distribution of trace metals in avian fossils over 120 million-year-old, researchers reconstruct the pigment patterns of their feathers—revealing some of the extinct birds' long-lost colors.